Like Grumps once said, if the E3 level was in instead of Metropolis, the everyone would complain and say that Metropolis looks twice as good than the E3 level.

Overall the E3 level doesn't even look that fun and appears to be pretty short. However I like the perched AA cannon in the distance. It kind of brings the idea what Halo would be with open-world like environments.

The only thing i really liked about the demo was the scale and the "human" nature to it. It looks like humanity is truly at war and struggling in this one where i didn't get that feeling as much in the final version.

But overall, alot of this is scripted anyway, Metropolis is the better version to me.

It was scripted (and the player probably had to some things or the game would break) and yet it played out 20x better than Reach E3 LNoS and Halo 4 E3 Infinity. Much more scale like Wilis kid pointed out.

Metropolis was interesting but I think what kills it is the relentlessly spawning Jackal snipers and those annoying Covie waves in the tunnel (it's still freaking hard to skip that with the Hog). I'd have preferred the encounters as set. Would have made fighting on LASO so much more viable.

Posted by: BestSpartan117it was scripted but super awesome.Then the demo did what it was supposed to back then, build hype for Halo 2.

Bungie knew that the Xbox wasn't capable of producing a level like that - "The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city... That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it," said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2. "We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine". (Source)

This pretty much supports the idea that it was just for hype building. Granted, it showcases Bungie's ambitions for Halo 2 at the time and they did deliver in the final product on all the mechanics that were shown in the E3 demo. However, as said earlier and correctly pointed out by Sliding Ghost, the whole demo was scripted. They had to follow set paths for the whole demo to play out. Specifically, look at the part with the Warthogs, they are clearly following a set path rather than dynamically driving like in the final game.

Bungie knew that the Xbox wasn't capable of producing a level like that - "The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city... That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it," said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2. "We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine". (Source)Makes me wonder if Destiny will have open-world environments. That alone would be epic.

Bungie knew that the Xbox wasn't capable of producing a level like that - "The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city... That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it," said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2. "We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine". (Source)Makes me wonder if Destiny will have open-world environments. That alone would be epic. I believe i read somewhere that there was rumours of Destiny being an open world game. It would be very interesting to see if this proves to be true and how it would play out.

Bungie knew that the Xbox wasn't capable of producing a level like that - "The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city... That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it," said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2. "We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine". (Source)Makes me wonder if Destiny will have open-world environments. That alone would be epic. I believe i read somewhere that there was rumours of Destiny being an open world game. It would be very interesting to see if this proves to be true and how it would play out.I too heard this. Also, I get that feeling by looking at the pictures. Imagine driving those large tanks around the world conquering everything in your path.

Mmmmm, do want.

Looking forward to Holidays of 2013, first with Destiny and now DkS II, I can waste my money on stuff I'll actually put to use.

Hi. My name is Sean. I've been a Bungie fan since Halo launched. Some of my interests include games, exercising, laser tag, martial arts, movies, music, sports, and technology. Feel free to contact me at any time.